Opinion

Amid the political and media clamour surrounding the ongoing negotiations between Lebanon and Israel under American sponsorship, many are absorbed by the traditional question: does Israel want peace? Are we standing before a new phase in relations between the two countries, or merely facing security arrangements imposed by the balance of power that emerged from the war? But the truth is that this question, however important, is not the most important one for Lebanon. The fundamental question today does not concern what Israel wants, but what Lebanon has managed to reclaim for itself after long decades of confiscation of its national decision-making.

It is astonishing, puzzling, disconcerting – even strange and paradoxical – that one still encounters today the same reductive, partisan narratives, published by an agenda-driven press and amplified across social media, at a time when the country is facing critical developments both domestically and internationally, and when its fate has been sorely tested for decades. Regrettably, this is hardly a first. We are witnessing media manipulation aimed at creating a diversion and deflecting attention from the pressing issues of the day – chief among them a merciless war that is dragging the country towards total destruction and plunging it into an unprecedented socioeconomic and financial abyss.

Lebanese have long repeated the popular saying: “A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one enemy within.” In few words, this proverb has distilled across generations an enduring political and national truth: external dangers, however formidable, remain less devastating than those that seep inward to strike at the unity of the state, paralyze its judgment and undermine its sovereignty. It is through this lens that one can understand much of Lebanon’s suffering over recent decades. Iran has never dealt with the Lebanese state as a sovereign and independent entity possessed of its own constitutional institutions; it has always chosen instead to operate through forces and organizations that owe it political and ideological allegiance. In the regional circumstances following the Khomeinist revolution, under the banner of “exporting the Islamic revolution,” it found a propitious opportunity to build relays of influence extending well beyond its national borders into several Arab countries.

The Strait of Hormuz has held the world up to a magnifying mirror of its own contradictions, much as the Covid-19 crisis did, or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Modern prosperity rests on global stability and the free flow of material exchanges — maritime routes, molecules, cables, ports, interest rates — within a globalisation built on the economy of contemporary reality. Faced with an energy crisis, reactions now follow a familiar pattern: rising oil prices make renewable energy more attractive, soaring gas prices heighten the importance of safer routes, and notions of reclaimed sovereignty reassert themselves in public debate.

Among my distinguished colleagues gathered at this podium dedicated to the Lebanese Constitution, I am nothing but a novice in the company of experts; yet I am also a Lebanese citizen in a democratic and constitutional republic, sincerely and earnestly attached to his citizenship. I know my constitutional rights, hold fast to them, and refuse to surrender them to any confessional community or zaamat . For over the course of a hundred years, the one constant need expressed by the Lebanese citizen as an individual has been his need for the State, not for the sect, not for the zaim . The Blessed Patriarch Elias Howayek, who, together with his companions, kindled the flame of Greater Lebanon, gazes upon us now from a century's distance. His gaze carries within it what he sees: disappointment, bitterness, and sorrow. And with good reason: we celebrate the founder… while destroying what he and his companions built.

For long decades, Israel waited for the right moment to liquidate what it considers a threat to its project, whether Palestinian, Lebanese, or linked to the Iranian regional agenda. Beyond military preparation, it worked steadily to arrange the diplomatic and media conditions needed to secure international cover for a major battle whose ambition was to redraw the face of the Middle East. When the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation erupted on October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu's government promoted the discourse of “existential danger”, exploiting the alignment of the major Western powers and above all the United States. That was the historic opportunity Netanyahu had been waiting for to unleash the devastating war machine, not only against Hamas but against anything that could be classified as an ally or supporter.

In an era when crises and challenges are multiplying, we read each day articles, studies and analyses focused primarily on describing the current reality and examining its political, economic and social dimensions. Yet, despite the importance of understanding the present, excessive focus on diagnosing the situation has locked us into circular thinking: we turn endlessly around the same observations and the same deadlocks, without genuinely advancing towards serious reflection on the future of Lebanon, on that of its citizens, and consequently on that of society and the State. Launching national reflection circles… with positivity

In an interview broadcast on one of Lebanon’s satellite channels, following Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and amid what had afflicted some with a certain “national indigestion”, former Lebanese Defence Minister Albert Mansour took aim at the inhabitants of the occupied Syrian Golan, who numbered at the time no more than twenty thousand souls and had chosen the path of peaceful resistance against the Israeli occupation, asking with derision: “Why don’t these people resist the Israeli occupation?” Many of Hezbollah’s mouthpieces and loyalists did the same, sparing the Golan’s inhabitants none of their repeated barbs over what they called a deviation from the principle “where there is occupation, there is resistance”, as though resistance could only manifest itself through rockets and projectiles, oblivious to the fact that the highest form of patriotism and resistance lies in clinging to the land, in refusing to surrender it as easy prey to the occupiers, and in preserving a heritage, a culture and an identity. This is precisely what the Golanis accomplished, within the limits of their modest and limited means, and in the most exemplary fashion. It was this state of affairs that compelled the author of these lines to publish, in January 2001, two detailed consecutive studies in the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir under the title “And They Ask You: When Will You Fight Israel?”, then to follow them with another article in “Qadaya An-Nahar” on 29 November 2005, entitled “A Letter to Hezbollah from the Occupied Golan”, in which he invited the organisation unreservedly to neutralise Lebanon and relieve its front from the burden of the conflict with Israel, now that the Lebanese had paid their share of the price.

There has been much talk, of late, about the necessity of changing the system of the Lebanese formula, described as a “crisis-generator”, and some speak lightly of an “other” Lebanon at a moment of extreme complexity through which the region is passing. Some have held, since 1989, that the Taif Accord is an accord of “necessity” — meaning that it “does not please us”, but necessity has its own imperatives: – the necessity of putting an end to the war, – the necessity of moving from war to peace, – the necessity of ridding oneself of an internal adversary, – the necessity of holding fast to this accord in the face of Hezbollah's weapons.

In Druze jargon, there is a phrase people use at moments of transition: “Enough… it’s time to go offer congratulations.” In another context, the same instinct may take the form of: “It’s time to go pay our condolences.” It is not merely a social courtesy. It is a political reflex shaped by history. It means that one moment has ended, another has begun, and those who understand the world as it is — not as they wish it to be — must act accordingly. The Druze have long been sensitive to political change. Geography taught them this. History reinforced it. Survival made it instinctive. They do not always need official declarations from capitals to know that the wind has shifted. Often, they sense it before others do.